Remote Viewing and the US Intelligence Community

by Armen Victoria
Extract from: Lobster Magazine

Issue 31 - 1996

At the beginning the operational aspects of RV were somewhat mixed with the research and studies; in later years, they were separated from each other. The CIA’s disclosure of its work in RV began in July 1995 when the agency declassified and released documents concerning their sponsorship of their 1970s program at Stanford Research Institute in Melano Park, CA, to Russell Targ.

The CIA announcement On September 6, 1995, the Public Affairs Bureau of the Central Intelligence Agency released the following statement regarding that agency’s role in Remote Viewing:

’As mandated by Congress, CIA is reviewing available information and past research programs concerning parapsychological phenomena, mainly "Remote Viewing" to determine whether they might have any utility for intelligence collection.

- CIA sponsored research on this subject in the 1970s.

- At that time, the program, always considered speculative and controversial, was determined to be unpromising.

- CIA is also in the process of declassifying the program’s history.

We expect to complete the current review this autumn and to make a recommendation regarding any future work by the US Intelligence Community in this area.’

Pursuant to the statement, and at the request of the Senate Appropriations Committee, CIA’s Office of Research and Development [ORD], in June 1995 commissioned the American Institute of Research (AIR) to conduct the review of the CIA’s Star Gate programme, whose mandate was to explore and exploit a parapsychological phenomenon known as ’remote viewing’ in support of the US Intelligence community. The initial mission assigned to Star Gate was three-fold;

1. To assess similar foreign programs in this field.

2. Through contractors to conduct research into the existence, as well as cause and effect of this phenomenon.

3. To seek and see if RV could be used as an intelligence tool. Initially, all RV programs were suspended in spring 1995, mainly due to a shift of policy in RV.

Results of multiple viewings obtained used to be summarized in a three or four page report, which were then sent to the original commissioning agency. But, from 1994, recipient agencies of RV reports were formally asked to evaluate the accuracy and value of the report contents. Seemingly, results did not meet the updated, intelligence standard requirements.

Research evaluation,

’To evaluate the research program, a "blue-ribbon" panel was assembled. The panel included two noted experts in the area of parapsychology: Dr. Jessica Utts, a Professor of Statistics at the University of California at Davis, and Dr. Raymond Hyman, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. In addition to their extensive credentials, they were selected to represent both sides of the paranormal controversy: Dr. Utts has published articles that view paranormal interpretation positively, while Dr. Hyman was selected to represent a more skeptical position’.

In addition AIR included two of its senior scientists; Dr. Lincoln Moses, an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University, to provide statistical advice, and Dr. David A. Goslin, President of AIR, as coordinator of the research efforts.

’Panel members were asked to review all laboratory experiments and meta-analytic reviews conducted as part of the research program; this consisted of approximately 80 separate publications, many of which are summary reports of multiple experiments. In the course of this review, special attention was given to those studies that,

(a) provided the strongest evidence for the remote viewing phenomena, and

(b) represented new experiments controlling for methodological artifacts identified in earlier reviews.

Separate written reviews were prepared by Dr. Utts and Dr. Hyman. They exchanged reviews with other panel members who then tried to reach a consensus’.

The AIR Executive Summary makes the following conclusions on the research studies conducted in various laboratories:

1. A statistically significant laboratory effort has been demonstrated in the sense that hits occur more often than chance.

2. It is unclear whether the observed effects can unambiguously be attributed to the paranormal ability of the remote viewers as opposed to characteristics of the judges or of the target or some other characteristic of the methods used. Use of the same remote viewers, the same judge, and the same target photographs makes it impossible to identify their independent effects.

3. Evidence has not been provided that clearly demonstrates that the causes of hits are due to the operation of paranormal phenomena; the laboratory experiments have not identified the origins or nature of the remote viewing phenomenon, if, indeed, it exists at all. Operational evaluation To assess the operational value of the remote viewing in intelligence gathering, AIR applied a three fold strategy.

First the relevant research literature was reviewed to identify whether the conditions applying during intelligence gathering would reasonably permit application of the remote viewing paradigm. Second, members of three groups were involved in the program were interviewed:

(1) end users of the information
(2) the remote viewers providing the reports
(3) the program manager. Third, feedback information obtained from end users judgments of the accuracy and value of the remote viewing reports was assessed

The results of these findings are summarized and illustrated in the following conclusions.

1. The conditions under which the remote viewing phenomenon is observed in laboratory settings do not apply in intelligence gathering situations. For example, viewers cannot be provided with feedback and targets may not display the characteristics needed to produce hits.

2. The end users indicated that, although some accuracy was observed with regard to broad background characteristics, the remote viewing reports failed to produce the concrete, specific information valued in intelligence gathering.

3. The information provided was inconsistent, inaccurate with regard to specifics, and required substantial subjective interpretation.

4. In no case had the information provided ever been used to guide intelligence operations. Thus, remote viewing failed to produce actionable intelligence. The AIR report concludes that although statistically significant effects have been observed in the laboratory, nevertheless, it remains unclear if remote viewing exists as a paranormal phenomenon. It further argues that the laboratory experiments have failed to provide scientifically sound evidence as to the nature and the origins of the remote viewing. Therefore, AIR suggests that these observations provide a compelling argument against the continuation of the remote viewing program in the intelligence community:

’Thus, we conclude that continued use of remote viewing in intelligence gathering is not warranted’. & It should be noted that the AIR did not have access to all sensitive, operational documents, which, I am confidently informed, are numerous. Neither could the time frame within which AIR compiled its report be considered sufficient. As Dr. Marcello Truzzi commented: ’..the recent strange CIA/AIR report which on the one hand indicates about a 15% above chance guessing rate while somehow managing to conclude that RV is not operationally useful (bad enough but also dismissing the many hits in the operational, non-experimental efforts with RV).

Given the low reliability of so many espionage methods and sources, one would have expected them to be delighted with 15% over chance. Obviously, the conclusions were dictated in advance of the evaluation study and were mostly politically motivated’. - Dr. Edwin C. May, Director of Research for Remote Viewing Programs for both the CIA and the DIA, also believes that the AIR Report was politically motivated, and neither the AIR nor the CIA were given enough time to prepare the document.

Dr. May also believes that the reasons for the cancellation of the RV programs were mainly due to the geopolitical shifts, and a review of priorities by the intelligence community. He speculates on the possibility of maintaining a nucleus of Remote Viewers in a classified level, and stated that while there were half dozen Remote Viewers involved in the program, due to the classified nature of the information he could not name them.

He further commented that Dr. Jack Vorona, Director of the DIA’s RV programme, was on `e of the Directors who had intimate knowledge of the programme and strongly supported it. Ingo Swann, who retired from the program in 1989, believes the program took on several individuals and made it quite busy to run; and, that some of the people involved did not have the high standards required. Ed Dames was one such individual who was imposed on him for political reasons. According to Swann, Dames was one student that he would rather not have had.

Background and history

Before 1971, when the American Intelligence community began investigating the fact that the Soviet Union was heavily involved in so-called ’Psychic Research’, the CIA had conducted some cursory investigation into this matter. Around 1970 the CIA discovered that the Soviets were spending approximately 60 million roubles per year in psychic research. (The Soviets used a Czech neologism, psychotronics, for their research.)

By 1975, this sum had increased to 300 million Roubles - not a trivial sum to spend on researching a controversial subject. It was not so much the Soviet research which raised CIA’s concern, but its operational applications. It was obvious that the Soviet’s tight security control, preventing any information leakage, meant that they must have had some serious breakthrough.

CIA analysts were faced with a dilemma: on one hand they were ill at ease with the idea of explaining to the main scientific advisors of the National Security Council (NSC) that the KGB and GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) were researching topics considered in US to be speculative and controversial at best. On the other, they were afraid that the Soviets might win this race, as they had done with the Sputnik. Finally, they came up with a solution. By coining the phrase ’Psychic Warfare Gap’ they convinced the NSC to take action. By then the US intelligence community was aware that psychotronics had an application, that something psychically aggressive might threaten the security of US. With Congressional approval they set out to research and examine the nature of this threat.

The CIA adopted a twin track approach. Publicly, through continuous disinformation campaigns, they endeavored to discredit psychic research. Secretly, they funded a series of projects and programmes over sixteen years, on which they spent over $20 million. The Soviets, aware of the US policy, reacted similarly. T. Chey too publicly denied the credibility of any psychic research, imprisoned a number of researchers, particularly those involved in information exchange with their western counterparts, and closed down several research institutes engaged in psychic research.

The origins of Remote Viewing

The term Remote Viewing was coined on December 8, 1971 by Ingo Swann, a homosexual New York artist, Dr. Janet Mitchell, Dr. Karlis Osis, and Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), in New York City. In the course of their ten ’out-of-body perceptual state’ experiments, ASPR attempted to locate hidden items on their premises, using clairvoyant perception. They succeeded. ASPR later decided to expand these experiments to targets outside their premises. Upon Swann’s suggestion, Dr. Janet Mitchell would give him the name of an American city. Swann would attempt to determine the weather condition there. Dr. Mitchell would then telephone the local weather bureau to see if Swann was correct.

Ingo Swann’s 1971 experiments were based on earlier, similar work conducted by the French researcher, Rene Warcolier (1881-1962) who, during the 1920’s, had conducted similar long-distance experiments between Paris and New York, and J. Hittinger, a British researcher. Amongst the terms ’remote viewing’ and ’remote sensing’ Swann argues the latter portrays a more accurate definition, but Dr. Osis and Schmeidler preferred ’remote viewing’. Swann took these experiments a step further. A person would go ’outbound’ as a ’beacon’ to a distant site somewhere in Manhattan. At a prearranged time the beacon would start making notes of the site - whilst his location would remain unknown to Swann back in ASPR. Swann then would focus on the beacon, attempting to describe where he was. The first of these experiments took place on Feb. 22, 1972.

In her book Out of Body Experiences Dr. Janet Mitchell suggests that these experiments were designed to develop means by which to ascertain ’whether a person could localize part of his or her consciousness in space some distance from the body’. While Mitchell believes that the targets in these experiments might have been perceived telepathically, clairvoyantly, precognitively, or fraudulently, Ingo Swann suggests that ’they were perceived by some type of perception which operated outside of normal visual range’. Swann extrapolates further: ’We are talking about whether the bio-human possesses additional receptors for organizing information that exceeds the local limits of the five physic senses. This he does with the help of at least seventeen more different types of senses that have been identified by biologists and neurologists.’

Enter the Central Intelligence Agency

It is now clear that at least as early as 1971, the CIA had been monitoring the results of the ASPR experiments, and, comparing them with similar information obtained from the Soviet Union, had become convinced that there were some significance in this research work. According to Swann:

’In late October 1971, I and a colleague were in Washington. This was still a time when no one wanted a psychic anywhere near their official premises. So, we met in bars and pizza parlours. On this occasion there were six spooks. But, one seemed very important because when he opened his mouth to talk, everyone else shut up immediately. Actually, he did not say much, but when he did it was always with a pointed question.

"Mr. Swann," he said, "If you were going to set up a threat analysis program to match what the Soviets are up to, what would you do?"’

In 1972 Harold Puthoff was involved in laser research at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), now SRI International, in Melano Park, California. At that time he was also circulating a proposal to obtain a grant for some research work in quantum biology. In it he raised the issue of whether physical theory, as publicly known, was capable of describing life processes, and had suggested some measurements involving plants and lower organism. Cleve Backster received a copy from Puthoff. He was involved in measuring the electrical activity of plants with standard polygraph equipment in New York. Ingo Swann, Backster’s friend, saw this proposal during a visit to his laboratory.

Subsequently, in March 30, 1972, he wrote to Puthoff suggesting that if Puthoff was interested in investigating this subject, he should conduct some experiments in parapsychology, including in his letter accounts of some of his successes in PK in Dr. Gertrude Schmidler’s laboratory at the City College, New York. Puthoff invited Swann to visit SRI for a week in June 1972 and demonstrate these effects.

Prior to Swann’s visit Puthoff concealed a well-shielded magnetometer below the floor of the building. It was used for quark-detection experiments. Its existence seemed to perturb Swann. To Puthoff’s surprise, Swann remotely viewed this complex piece of machinery and drew a reasonable outline of its interior working mechanism. Puthoff, impressed by Swann’s finding, wrote a paper about this event and circulated it amongst his scientific colleagues.

A few weeks after the the publication of this paper two CIA officers turned up at SRI. They had done their homework on Puthoff’s background, his work as an Officer of Naval Intelligence, and then as a civilian with the National Security Agency (NSA) a few years before. Puthoff was told that there was increasing concern in the CIA about Soviet parapsychology efforts and its KGB, GRU funding. Since parapsychology was considered dubious at best by the Western scientific community, the CIA was looking for a research establishment somewhat outside the academic mainstream to handle a quietly funded and classified, investigation programme.

They asked Puthoff if he was willing to conduct some more experiments with Ingo Swann; and, provided the results of these tests were encouraging, would he consider a pilot programme to further this investigation? Puthoff agreed, and arranged for a series of tests. Puthoff commented subsequently:

’Since the reputation of the intelligence services is mixed among members of the general populace, I have on occasion been challenged as to why I would agree to co-operate with the CIA or other elements of the intelligence community in this work. My answer is simply that as a result of my own previous exposure to this community I became persuaded that war can almost always be traced to a failure in intelligence, and that therefore the strongest weapon for peace is good intelligence.’

The first tests at SRI were simple and successful. The CIA officers visiting the lab would ask Swann to describe items they hid in a box. As result of these tests in October 1972, an eight months pilot study program, with a budget of $49,909, was negotiated. It was called Biofields Measurement Program, and it ran from January to August 1973. One of Puthoff’s colleagues, Russell Targ, with a long history of involvement in parapsychology, joined the team. In the course of this pilot study at SRI, three of the CIA’s contract monitors themselves participated as remote viewers in order to critique the protocols. They were contributors to seven of fifty-five viewings during this time, several of striking quality.

By 1975 Puthoff and Targ could report that,

’The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions (that is, generated target descriptions of sufficiently high quality to permit blind matching of descriptions to targets by independent judges).’

Coordinate Remote Viewing

ASPR experiments, using a ’beacon’, were not of much use for any espionage remote viewing programme: they required an agent to be placed in the target area, which was not feasible. And providing the name of the distant target would have resulted in too much cueing of the viewer. Swann consulted with a number of scientists outside the SRI circles in Silicon Valley, on how to combat this problem.

Eventually, Jacques Vallée came up with a solution. He suggested that Swann use an address as the focus. Swann later interpreted and developed this into map co-ordinates - latitude and longitude - thereby later on leading to the birth of Project SCANATE (Scanning by Co-ordinates).

Remote Viewing Jupiter

One of most intriguing of the fifty-five experiments was number 46, the second major co-ordinate viewing in the CIA-funded eight month pilot study. The purpose of this experiment was,

’To try to ascertain if long distance remote sensing could extend to a very far distant, to record the time it took before impressions began to be given, and to compare the impressions with published scientific feedback.’

The target chosen was the planet Jupiter; the date of experiment, April 27, 1973. NASA’s Pioneer Ten was already en route to the planet, but too far away to send data back to Earthbase, principally at Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). The viewers were Ingo Swann in California, and Harold Sherman in Arkansas. With two viewers 2000 miles apart, the idea was to see whether the independent data obtained would correspond with each other - which it did.

In the course of this attempt a ring around Jupiter was discovered.

’Very high in the atmosphere there are crystals, they glitter. Maybe the stripes are like bands of crystals, maybe like rings of Saturn, though not far out like that. Very close within the atmosphere. I bet you they’ll reflect radio probes. Is that possible if you had a cloud of crystals that were assaulted by different radio waves?’

The existence of the ring was discovered and confirmed in early 1979, six years after this experiment. A copy of the 300 page long report of this viewing was sent to a number of scientific institutions including NASA.

According to Ingo Swann, the first CIA selected co-ordinate remote viewing experiment took place on July 21 and 22, 1973, an attempt at remote sensing the joint Soviet-French weather installation on the Island of Kerguelen, in the South Indian Ocean. Swann comments:

’It was to be nearly six years before I saw a topographical map of Kerguelen, which included the buildings and other man-made features. I had missed some of them, but was told that the major buildings were orange and there were a number of outhouses whose locations needed to be moved every once in a while.’

The Kerguelen experiment was not classified, and, about a week later, its details were leaked by the intelligence community. The Executive Summary of the CIA Final Report of the second year, provides an insight into Pat Price and Ingo Swann’s coordinated RV work funded by the CIA:

’In order to subject the remote viewing phenomena to a rigorous long-distance control, a request for geographical coordinates of a site unknown to subject and experimenters was forwarded to the [CIA’s] OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] group responsible for threat analysis in this area. In response SRI personnel received a set of facility [co-ordinates] hereafter referred to as the West Virginia Site.

The experimenters then carried out a remote viewing experiment on a double-blind basis, that is blind to experimenters as well as subject. The experiment had as its goal the determination of the utility of remote viewing under conditions approximating an operational scenario. Two subjects targeted on the site, a sensitive installation. One subject drew a detailed map of the building and grounds layout, the other provided information about the interior including code-words, data subsequently verified by sponsor sources [i.e. CIA].’

CIA ’s Project Atlas - Remote Viewing Semipalatinsk, USSR

On Christmas Day of 1962, Soviet Union conducted its last of the series of 65 nuclear weapons tests. These tests which started on August 1, 1962, were conducted on and over the mountains of Semipalatinsk and the ice of Novaya Zemlya. Early in 1963, Soviets signed a Test Ban Treaty, and their testing program went underground. The big question for the US was; What of the future? US intelligence community lacked sufficient information concerning the Soviet’s nuclear material production, patterns of use, future application and trends.

Since the CIA had nowhere else to go to obtain further information on the Soviet’s nuclear installations in Semipalatinsk, Pat Price, in July 1974, was asked to remote view the region. This was the firs ]t official remote viewing project targeting the Soviet Union.

’To determine the utility of remote viewing under operational conditions, a long-distance remote viewing experiment was carried out on a sponsor-designated target of current interest, an unidentified research center at Semipalatinsk, USSR. This experiment was carried out in three phases, was under direct control of the COTR [Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative].

’In Phase one, map co-ordinates were furnished to the experimenters, the only additional information provided being the designation of the target as an R&D [Research and Development] test facility. The experimenters then carried out a remote viewing experiment with subject 1 [Pat Price - author] on a double-blind basis. The results of the experiment were turned over to client representatives for data evaluation.

’Were the results not promising, the experiment would have stopped at this point. The results were judged to be of sufficiently good quality, however, that Phase two was entered in which the subject was focused on the generation of physical data which could be client-verified, providing a calibration in the process. The end of Phase two gradually evolved into the first part of the phase three, the generation of unverifiable data not available to the client, but of interest nonetheless. Evaluation of the data by the client is under way.’

Some of the results of RV experiments were startling. On the Night Line TV show on Remote Viewing, on November 28, 1995, a CIA representative, known only as ’Norm’, a former CIA Technical Advisor to John McMahon, Deputy Director, on the use of RV programmes in mid-1980s, stated,

’Well, if it is the eight martini results you want to talk about, I won’t talk about them’.

’Eight martini results’ is an in-house term for remote viewing data so good it cracks everyone’s sense of reality. On the same programme Robert Gates, the ex-Director of CIA, added that the remote viewing had a promising future.

Ingo Swann has provided an account of one such ’eight martini result’, which took place between 1975/76. He was asked to remote view Soviet submarines. According to Swann, in that event, ’there was all sorts of brass sitting there and Puthoff was on my left and this two or three star general was on my right and I was fussing away as they gave me the co-ordinates. This was one of those "big tests" things that went on, with witnesses and the room was filled. And so I was doing my remote viewing bugaloo and finally I came across something that I stopped in my tracks and I looked at it and said, "Oh my God".

So I whispered over Hal’s ear and said,

"Hal, I don’t know what to do. I think that this submarine has shot down a UFO or the UFO fired on her. What shall I do?"

And Puthoff was as pale as anything you know, and he looked at me and whispered, "Oh, Christ. It is your show. You do what you think you should do."

So, I sketched out this picture of this UFO and this brass sitting on my right grabbed it and said, "What’s that, Mr. Swann?"

I said, "Sir, I think it is rather obvious what that is."

And he took that paper and he stood up, and when he stood up everybody else stood up, except me and Puthoff, and walked out of the room, so did the others. So Puthoff and I went back to the hotel and I said, "Oh Christ, We’ve blown the program".

So we went out and got drunk on margaritas and things like that and went back. Three days later Puthoff got a call. The call said, "OK, how much money do you want?"’

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

The ’Anomalous Mental Phenomena’ programs which were carried out at SRI from 1973 through 1989, were continued in SAIC from 1992 through 1994. In a memorandum issued on July 25, 1995, by Dr. Edwin C. May provided titles and details of the ten experiments which were carried out at SAIC. The title of these experiments are as followed:

Target Dependencies

AC with Binary Coding

AC Lucid Dreams, base

AC Lucid Dreams, pilot

ERD AC Behaviour

Entropy II

Other experiments carried out in SAIC were:

AC of Binary Targets

MEG Replication

Remote Observation

ERD EEG Investigation

Project Grill Flame

One of the operational sections of the RV programme was the DoD project GRILL FLAME. Records concerning this project were denied to me by several US Intelligence community member organizations. Eventually, on February 1, 1996, I managed to obtain relevant documents regarding this little-known project. These records were specifically located and declassified pursuant to my on going request of December 7, 1995, by US Intelligence and Security Command.

The operational wing of the overall STAR GATE programme could be traced back to 1977, when the US Army began a program to discover what intelligence information the enemy could discover using Remote Viewing. The Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff - Operations; Human Intelligence branch (ADCSOPS-HUMINT) through its ’Special Action Branch’, was tasked for that mission.

By 1978, and by establishment of Detachment ’G’, (later listed in the Intelligence and Security Command [INSCOM] books as GRILL FLAME), the US Army was given a new mission: to actually utilize Remote Viewing as an intelligence gathering tool. By this time the entire DoD’s RV program was moved under the administrative umbrella of GRILL FLAME, a joint effort by several US departments and agencies, with the DIA’s oversight.

Swann quits

In 1983, Detachment G [GRILL FLAME] whose personnel and operations up until then had been trained by Ingo Swann, parted company with him. Major Ed Dames had managed to put together a team apparently capable of producing the required data. This separation created a bitter dispute between the two which continues today. The new team under the designation CENTER LANE continued its operations. In 1986, after several controversies, the newly appointed INSCOM commanding general, on the orders of his superiors, passed this unit to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They merged with SUN STREAK, which was under the control of DIA’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate (DT-S).

In the early nineties the Remote Viewing program had been reclassified from SAP (Special Access Program) to LIMIDS (Limited Distribution), and was once more re-designated, this time as as STAR GATE. From over 40 personnel officially serving throughout the duration of the program, 23 were military. In the eighties, when the program was at its peak, it employed seven full-time viewers, supported by teams of administrative and analytical personnel. Throughout the history of RV programs several operations and projects were created.

To name a few:

BLUE BIRD, that targeted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi

LANDBROKER, targeting Panamanian General Manuel Noriega

Project THORN, dealing with the UFO problem

Project ARROW SHOP, about which little is known

The latter Project Star Gate

The second phase of Project STAR GATE, which was mainly under DIA’s control, used three individuals, two of whom were women. The demise of the programme could be mainly attributed to WRV, Written Remote Viewing, which was introduced, to the dismay of the original viewers, in 1988. WRV was a combination of channelling and automatic writing, as well using tarot cards. WRV produced much less reliable results than that of the SRI-developed CRV (Coordinated Remote Viewing) and ERV (Extended Remote Viewing), a hybrid relaxation/ meditative-based method.

WRV was immediately adopted by the intelligence community as the main modus operandi. Compared to CRV and ERV, it lacked the necessary laboratory-based trials. At the time of its transfer from DIA to CIA in June 1995, the STAR GATE programme was left with only three viewers, two using WRV, and only one using CRV. Mismanagement also plagued the program during its latter years.

During its life time from 1986 [its first phase] to the spring of 1995 [second phase], it received more than 200 tasks from operational military organizations to use remote viewing to attain information unavailable from other sources. The activities of the project, which led to the demise of the RV program, are too complex to be discussed here. As one intelligence source commented on RV programs 6:

’In the historical files there are also a number of customer evaluations from the likes of the Secret Service, NSA, the Military Services, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ironically the CIA, reporting (occasionally even in rather glowing terms) the usefulness of remote viewing as an intelligence tool’.

During the past twenty two years, remote viewing programmes, geared with continuous research, including several hundred scientists from various scientific disciplines to oversee these programmes, generated wealth of valuable research data that should not be discarded for current, political reasons. Independent of, and contrary to their overt military and intelligence applications, this vast array of information is a testimony to the fact that the human bio-sensorium is not limited to its five sense prison.

While in letters of July 22 and November 27, 1992, the CIA had previously denied to author having any documents on this subject, it has now admitted to possessing over one hundred thousand pages of records Copies of these documents were sent to me in August 1995. On August 27, 1995, by a curious coincidence, Channel 4 in Britain screened the documentary ’The Real X-Files’ on the RV programme, in the UK (later shown in US), nicely preparing the ground further for their public announcement.

’The Real X-Files’ was written by Jim Schnabel who had previously been involved in the debunking of the crop circle phenomenon, and, in his book Dark White, of the alien abduction allegations. Schnabel was introduced to Ingo Swann by two of Swann’s friends. Telephone conversation with Swann, March 31, and Apr. 6, 1996. Allegations have been made to me by a usually reliable intelligence source that Schnabel is a CIA asset but I have seen no evidence.

Amongst others participating in CIA/DoD RV programmes were Dr. Christopher ’Kit’ Green, and Geoff Harrison, both from Directorate of Intelligence (Office of Science and Technology), CIA - now retired.
For Kit Green see ’The Birds’, UFO Magazine, Vol. 11, issue 3, 1992; and ’John Alexander; Pentagon’s Penguin’, Lobster 28.
3 Reuter, Washington, DC, Nov. 28, 1995
For Hyman see ’The Pentagon’s Psychic Research’, in Lobster 30.
’An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications’, by Michael D. Mumford, Phd., Andrew M. Rose, Phd., David A. Goslin, Phd.; prepared by The American Institute of Research (AIR), Sep. 29, 1995.
Executive Summary; Research Evaluation, p. E-2. After the publication of this report in January 1996, Congress, with the DoD and CIA, halted further funding for psychic research.
On April 19, 1996 I wrote to David Goslin, AIR President asking him 17 questions concerning the manner in which AIR had handled their RV report. In his reply of 26 April Goslin wrote, ’I find your questions to be insulting’ and asserted that throughout AIR’s history it had maintained the highest standards of integrity and scientific objectivity.
Op. cit. 5, Executive Summary [Operational Evaluation], AIR report, p. E-3 Dr. Marcello Truzzi letter of March 17, 1996, to author.
Telephone Conversation with Dr. Edwin C. May, April 6, 1996. Dr. May added that there is a great deal of on-going research regarding the EEG of the remote viewers that as yet has not been published.
After Jack Vorona, Director of Department of Defense RV programs STARGATE and CENTER LANE until 1986, Dale Graff, a civilian Physicist from Office of Scientific and Technical Intelligence Directorate DT-S, DIA, took over the directorship of the SUN STREAK RV program.
On Dames, see ’John Alexander, the Pentagon’s Penguin’ in Lobster 28.
Ingo Swann commented that most of Ed Dames’ RV work at that time, and since the establishment of PSI-TECH lacked any positive feed-back. (Telephone conversation with Swann, May 4 1996). Swann is also critical of Dames’ RV work on UFOs. Yet Swann himself has been involved in remote viewing UFOs. In particular he has conducted extensive RV work on the Roswell incident. He prepared his first official remote viewing report on Roswell on April 28, 1993, when 4 remote viewers were involved. As recently as April this year he was still involved in remote viewing the UFO phenomenon and the alleged aliens. (Copies of his UFO RV work are in my archives.)
Russell Targ also believes that none of the RV work done by the Ed Dames group had any positive outcome.
Telephone conversation with Russell Targ, April 23, 1996.
13 For example, the research at the Maimonides Hospital in New York, discussed in ’The Pentagon’s Psychic Research’ in Lobster 30.
This is discussed in ’A Close-up Look at Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, Dec. 6, 1995 - InterNet.
In the aftermath of CIA’s public announcement, Swann has published several articles on the InterNet. Swann’s accounts are carefully chosen to follow the official line. For more information on Swann, also see his Your Nostradamus Factor (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1993
14 ’A Close-up Look at Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, Dec. 6, 1995 - InterNet.
A May 1992, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document, classified Secret/NOFORN (no foreigner), still reflects the US Intelligence community fears about psychic research; ’Photography and available open source literature concerning the scope and thrust of the Chinese PS [parapsychology - author] effort. Collection Efforts are an attempt to update DIA holdings and plug a 5-10 year intelligence gap in this area. Among the half dozen senators supporting the programme, were Clairborne Pell [Democrat-Rhode Island] and Robert C. Byrd [Democrat-West Virginia]. In the course of the programme, C. Richard D’Amoto, Senator Byrd’s staff member, and an intelligence specialist, several times successfully quashed DIA’s effort to kill the RV programme. British newspapers gave a variety of figures.
The Sunday Times, December 3, 1995, quoted the figure $12 million, and Guardian, September 30, 1995, quoted a figure of $11 million. This is discussed in Lobster 30 ’The Emergence of Project SCANATE; The First Espionage-worthy Remote Viewing Experiment - Summer 1973’.
Ingo Swann, Dec. 29, 1995, InterNet.
See Mind to Mind, Rene Warcollier, Creative Age Press, NY 1946
See Exploring the Ultra-Perceptive Faculty, J. Hittinger, Rider & Co., London, 1941
Ingo Swann interview on ’Dreamland’ transcribed Organization: University of Wisconsin, Dec. 12, 1996.
Russell Targ also confirmed that some RV work was done on the Soviet’s submarine, but the result was never fed back to them due to the classified nature of the relevant programme. (Telephone conversation with Targ, April 23, 1996.) A similar experiment was conducted in Paul McKenna’s ’Paranormal’ TV show in Feb. 19, 1996.
Joseph McMoneagle, a former Army Intelligence officer, was the Remote Viewer Swann, op. cit. 22 Janet Mitchell, McFarland, 1981. New York Swann, op. cit. 22 ’Remote Viewing as One of Sidhis’, Ingo Swann, Jan. 10, 1996, InterNet. Also see The Expanding World of Human Perception, Robert Rivlin and Karen Gravelle, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984.
’Messages Regarding Remote Viewing; For the Glory of our Species’, Ingo Swann, InterNet, December 10, ’Toward a Quantum Theory of Life Process’, unpublished paper by H.E. Puthoff, 1972 - SRI. Swann visited SRI twice in 1972; in June, and October A version of this paper, ’Physics, Entropy and Psychokinesis’, by Puthoff, H.E. and Targ, R., was later published in Proceedings of the Conference in Quantum Physics and Parapsychology, 1975 (Geneva, Switzerland), New York, Parapsychology Foundation.
’CIA-Initiated Remote Viewing Program at Stanford Research Institute’, H.E. Puthoff, in Journal for Society for Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10. No. 1, 1996, [from draft copy - p.3 Ibid].
Footnote 5. ’A Perceptual Channel for Information Transfer over Kilometer Distances: Historical Perspective and Recent Research’, H.E. Puthoff, R. Targ, in Proc. IEEE - 1976.
’Perceptual Augmentation Techniques [Classified; Secret], Part One - Executive Summary. Final Report Covering the Period Jan. 74 through Feb. 75’, H.E. Puthoff, and Russell Targ.
Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory, SRI Project 3183. Approved by Earle Jones, Director, Electronics and Bioengineering Lab., Bonner Cox, Executive Director, Information Science and Engineering Division. Records released by the CIA, 1995. Also, in mid-1970s, the CIA requested a lengthy examination of the RV, in which some viewers as well as a number of professional consultants were involved. The result was a report titled ’Social Resistance to Psi’. ’Remote Viewing vs. Its Skeptics’, Ingo Swann, Jan. 20, 1996, InterNet. In 1988 an analysis was made of all the experiments at SRI from 1973 until that time - 1988. The analysis was based on all 154 experiments conducted during that era, consisting of over 26,000 individual trials. Of those, almost 20,000 were of the forced choice type and just over a 1000 were laboratory remote viewing. There were a total of 227 subjects in all experiments.
’An Overall Analysis of the SRI Experiments: 1973-88’, pp. 3-14. See also SRI International Technical Report, March 1989, ’Review of the Psychoenergetic Research Conducted at SRI International (1973-88)’ by May et al. Other remote viewers of this era are Keith Harary, a Trburon psychologist who joined SRI in 1980, and later continued his work with SAIC (SAIC is discussed below); Larissa Vilenskaya, a Russian emigrant who worked as a psychic in the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1975 and later joined SRI; and Joseph McMoneagle who obtained a Legion of Merit award in 1984 for providing 150 essential elements of information through RV, of value to US defense.
’The 1973 Remote Viewing Probe of The Planet Jupiter’, Ingo Swann. Dec. 12, 1995, InterNet
Harold Sherman was a psychic who, in late 1930s, had taken part in long distance viewing experiments between New York City and the Arctic. These experiments were conducted in conjunction with the Arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. See Thoughts Through Space, Sir Hubert Wilkins and Harold M. Sherman, Creative Age Press, NY 1942. Op. cit. 38.
Ms. Beverly Humphrey, a Research Associate and Statistical Analyst, SRI Radio Physics Lab., prepared a Formal Report on behalf of Puthoff and Targ. The report was 300 pages long, and was widely distributed. Also, see Mind Reach, H.E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, Russell, Delacorate Press/Eleanor Friede, New York, 1977.
See ’The Pentagon’s Psychic Research, in Lobster 30.
’The First CIA-Selected Coordinate Remote Viewing’, Ingo Swann, undated - InterNet; and ’Category I: Long Distance Remote Viewing’, p.4, classified Secret ’DC Power and Cooling Tower’, Henry Rubenstein, in Studies in Intelligence, CIA, vol. 16, No. 3, (Autumn 1972), pp. 81,82. Classified Secret. Also, see Inside CIA’s Private World, By H. Bradford Westerfield, Yale University Press, 1995, p. 3 Progress Report No. 5, Covering Period 1 April to August 1974 - Project Atlas Remote Viewing, p. 2. Also, see, Final Report January 1974 through February 1975, Program Results; Applied Research Efforts, pp. 8 and 9.
In his telephone conversation of April 10, 1996, with the author, Swann claimed that all of his RVs were of 8-martini grade. Ingo Swann interview on "Dreamland" transcribed Organization: University of Wisconsin, Dec. 12, 1996. One of main partners of Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) is retired Admiral Boby Inman, former Director of NSA, ONI, and Deputy Director of CIA.
Remote Viewing work carried out in SAIC was a substantial one which requires a separate paper Op. cit. 5, ’The SAIC Era’ and ’The Ten Experiments’, pp. 3-17, 3-18.
See ’Pentagon’s Psychic Research’, Lobster 30, for previous information on Grill Flame Previously, the ’Special Branch’ of Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Human Intelligence, created in 1979, was specifically used as a vehicle for GRILL FLAME . (Formalization of Project GRILL FLAME. Record released to author Feb. 1, 1996.) But according to a Secret/Eyes Only/Not Releasable to Foreigners teletype, from Major General E.R. Thompson, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence; ’Effective 14 Jan. 81, by approval of Under Secretary of Army, INSCOM [Intelligence Security Command] is now the only active operational GRILL FLAME element in Army’.
US Army Intelligence Command record released to author in Feb. 1, 1996. See also ’Former "Project Stargate" Operative Sets the Record Straight’, by Ed Dames, in CE Chronicles, Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan.-Feb. 1996, p. 8. The address of CE Chronicles is given below in the ’Sources’ section. For Operation Blue Bird, a see ’Psychic Warned CIA of Attack’, the Dallas Morning News, Dec. 8, 1995.
For LANDBROKER, see ’Pentagon’s Psychic Research’, Lobster 30 Confidential Source

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